In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Nathan Van Coops

  I watch Mr. Cameron on the second level balcony, holding a leather bound book at arms length so he can read the title.

  “We wouldn’t necessarily all have to go, right?” Robbie asks. “I mean, we would all end up at the same place anyway.”

  “Yes, you could certainly take the normal timestream and end up in the same place. Usually.” The last word trails off quietly, but Francesca still asks the follow up.

  “What do you mean by, ‘usually?’”

  But Dr. Quickly gets out of his chair and heads for the stairs to the second balcony, seemingly unaware of the question. He joins Mr. Cameron in his appraisal of the various items stashed in the array of cubbyholes.

  “Did I just get dissed?” Francesca laughs as she watches him go.

  “Maybe he just didn’t hear you,” Robbie responds.

  “He is a little old,” Carson suggests. “Maybe he’s hard of hearing.”

  “Or has selective hearing,” Blake adds.

  “Would you not want to jump ahead yet?” I ask Robbie.

  “I’m not in a hurry right this moment. I feel a little responsible for getting my grandpa into all of this. I’d hate to ditch out on him, especially now, when he could go any second.”

  “I didn’t necessarily mean right away,” Blake says. “I mean, it would be good to see that we’d gotten him through till your family makes it back, but we’re going to have to leave eventually. I don’t know that it necessarily does a lot of good to delay it.”

  Carson wanders around the table and leans his forearms on the back of Francesca’s armchair. Francesca continues Blake’s thought. “Also, I don’t know if I’m the only one worried about this or not, but we’re not getting any younger in the past. I know this may not be a big deal to you guys, because you are guys, but I don’t really want to use up too much of my prime years in 1986. This girl has some things to get done in the present day, and I may need all my good-looking days at my disposal. Just sayin’.”

  “You don’t want to date an eighties rocker?” Carson asks.

  “Hey, I’m not saying I don’t love a man who can rock a perm.” Francesca laughs. “But I’m not sure I want to date a guy who has more beautiful hair than me. We might have problems. Plus, we have lives and careers there. I know we’ll be making it back around the time we left, but there are a lot of things we left hanging when this happened to us. My cat will have no problem tearing a hole through the food bag if I don’t make it home soon, but we have other people depending on us too. I don’t really want to get fired from my job. I like it there.”

  Rain begins to pour outside and cascades down the glass wall of windows stretching up above us. My clouds from last night have finally decided to open up. I slide off my stool and wander over to the windows looking down on the street. I watch the cars splashing through a puddle growing from the runoff from a side street. A pair of umbrellas and a couple sets of feet pass below me on the sidewalk.

  “Um, Carson?” Blake says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you okay, man? I think your arms are bleeding.”

  Francesca pivots in her chair. I look and see that Carson’s arms are indeed red near his elbows. “Oh God, what is that!” Francesca springs from the chair and spins around.

  Carson looks closer at his elbows. “It does look like blood, but it’s almost like it’s congealed.”

  “That’s really gross,” Francesca says.

  “It’s not me,” Carson says. “It’s on this chair.”

  Mr. Cameron and Dr. Quickly are descending the stairs together and Quickly points Mr. Cameron in the direction of the bathroom down the hall before walking our direction.

  “Um, Doctor?” I say. “Your chair seems to be bleeding.”

  Dr. Quickly surveys the chair briefly. “Ah, yes. I was wondering if that might happen.”

  “You were wondering if your armchairs would start bleeding?” Francesca says.

  “It’s not the chair really,” he says, walking closer and leaning in to have a look. “It’s part of an experiment I have going on at the moment. I’m starting to get results back. Don’t be worried, the chair will be fine.” He grabs the back of the chair and drags it away to the corner. “I’ll just move this and we can avoid sitting in that one for a bit.”

  “Does this sort of thing happen often?” Robbie asks.

  “No. Thankfully not,” Quickly replies. “The upholstery bills would get outrageous. I just happen to have a rather complex test going on at the moment. It’s getting quite exciting.”

  “Can you tell us what it is?” I say.

  “No. I’m afraid I don’t want to share it yet. I’d hate for it to skew the results.” He turns his eyes from the chair back to us. “I can however share that I’ve had pizza delivered. It’s in the kitchen for you. Though you will probably want to wash those arms off first, Carson.”

  “Yeah, I don’t need some kind of chair disease,” Carson says. He wanders toward the back.

  Francesca continues to eye the chair in the corner suspiciously but finally pulls her gaze away. “You wouldn’t think I’d have an appetite after seeing that, but it shows what I know. Pizza actually sounds amazing right now.”

  She and Robbie head for the kitchen. I turn back to the view of the rain. After a moment, I see Quickly’s reflection next to mine. “No lunch for you today?” he asks.

  “Maybe in a bit. I had breakfast twice today.”

  “Time travel can take a toll on your grocery budget,” he replies.

  “Doctor, can I ask you something personal?”

  “I’ve always dressed this badly out of fashion, if you must know.”

  “Ha. I think tweed will never go out of style if you ask me.”

  He looks at me attentively.

  “It’s really a couple of questions. One thing I was wondering was why you never went big with this technology.” I hold up the chronometer on my wrist. “This is amazing. The work you’ve put into this and the discovery of the gravitites must have been a guaranteed Nobel Prize. Haven’t you been tempted to be rewarded for all of it? You would be world famous.”

  Quickly looks out the window before responding. “I would say you’ve answered that question in part already. Fame is not for everyone. I had a partner working on this with me early on whom I know would have been thrilled to be on the cover of Time magazine. I think he had his interview already planned out in his head. We had very different motivations for getting into this research.

  “I did it partly for the achievement itself but also because I had strong motivation to succeed. There are things much more important and rewarding than fame.”

  “I know what you mean,” I reply. “I don’t know how willing I would be to share this either.

  “Today, when I messed up my jump, it was a scary moment. Realizing how much harm I could have done was . . . sobering is the best word I can think of. But then later on, when I had to make that jump from the bathroom, and it worked, it was an amazing feeling. I mean, I was running and it was hectic, and the adrenaline had my heart going a mile a minute, but when I made it back and things worked out, I felt elated and excited about it all. I can see how it changes all of your perspectives on things.

  “What you’ve done here, and how you’ve designed these chronometers, just blows my mind. I know we’re headed home and back to our normal lives, but I’ve got to tell you, after an experience like this, I don’t know how going back to fixing boats is going to stack up.”

  “You are at the tip of the iceberg, Benjamin. I’m not going to tell you that it is worth all of the risks, because I know I haven’t told you all of the dangers. I’m afraid I’ve only just begun to tell you and your friends all the potential threats you face in doing this, but my years in the education system have taught me enough to know that scaring you all witless isn’t going to help you learn, or help you get home.” He slides his hands into his pockets and leans against the glass, facing me.

  “That being said, I can say that
despite the innumerable dangers I have encountered to date, it has been incredible. I may not have seen my face on Time magazine, but I have been amply rewarded.”

  The glass in front of me has fogged from my breath. I trace my finger through it in little swirls. “Do you regret leaving it all behind? Did you ever try to go back to your life?”

  “I visited a few times. There were people I cared about that I wanted to see. I haven’t abandoned them. My disappearance was not total, like the media believed. Professionally I disappeared. Oddly enough it wasn’t as hard as I had expected to leave that behind. My colleagues were a competitive bunch, and there were only a few that I really missed working with.”

  “I know what that’s like.” I turn my swirls into a sun and some planets.

  “I’d known for a while that I was going to succeed with the gravitites. I wasn’t rushing to get my results publicized because I always had other more practical intentions for this work. I rushed things a little obviously or I would never have involuntarily displaced myself, but I don’t regret the result. On the contrary, getting lost in time was the best thing that ever happened to me, for more than a few reasons.”

  “So you don’t plan on ever going back?”

  “Not currently.”

  I finish drawing a comet on the glass and take a step back to look at my little cosmos. It’s small, but it’s growing. “How did you figure out these chronometers?” I fiddle with the dials on my wrist.

  “Ah, well there I can’t take all the credit. After my first serious time traveling experience, I had the great fortune of meeting a marvelously talented watchmaker named Abraham Manembo, who worked with me on designing them. He was able to take my bulky equipment and streamline it into what you have on your wrist. His innovations are what have made time travel so much more efficient than anything I had previously dreamed up. ”

  A lightning bolt crosses the sky and it’s only a few seconds till the boom of thunder.

  “During my experience last night, I realized what a fragile position I was in. Without the chronometer, I would’ve been in much worse trouble, especially if I ended up somewhere more dangerous. It made me wonder if you had any more specific survival type skills you could teach us.”

  “Survival skills are all I have been teaching you so far. It has all been about surviving.”

  “Well yeah. I see what you’re saying, and that’s true, but what I was thinking was more worst-case-scenario type stuff. I mean, I spent most of last night either running away from people, or wandering around lost, or trying to get around barefoot in the city with no money. It was great exercise, I can say that, but I don’t think I was very efficient.”

  “I certainly do have plans to get to some of those types of scenarios with you. I had not expected you to need them quite so soon, but I should have factored human error in better. That was my fault, and I hope you will forgive me. As a teacher of anything it is often difficult to remember that just because you have covered something does not mean it has sunk in properly, or really been processed to the point of understanding. Perhaps I shall have to devise some more quizzes or checks.”

  “My other question was . . . would you teach me how to build a chronometer?”

  Dr. Quickly’s eyebrows rise a little. “That’s a big thing to ask, Benjamin. Having chronometers floating around unaccounted for has really never been a part of my plans for helping get you home. Time traveling is a serious business. All manner of chaos can ensue from careless use. What is your motivation for wanting to learn to build one?”

  “Well, I had first thought that it would be good to know how to repair these in case one gets damaged. I wouldn’t want to get stuck halfway back and not be able to contact you. The idea of being stuck somewhere in a time I don’t want to be in really worried me, and it made me think it would be a good way to feel safer doing this if I knew how to get myself un-stranded. Plus, some of it is sheer curiosity. I think they’re amazing. Working on one of these would be way more interesting than fixing boats.”

  “It’s a fair thing to ask. There are a million possible scenarios where you might need to know. Yours could be damaged as you said, or lost, or stolen. It is a valuable item. The knowledge is an even more valuable commodity however. I have not really addressed this issue with your friends yet, but we’re going to have to broach the subject soon. We’re going to have to discuss your plans for what you will be doing once you make it back to your own time.”

  Quickly places his hands against the glass, to feel the impact of the rain beating against the other side. “I had intended that these chronometers would be a loan, and that you would return them to me once you succeeded. If you are starting to think you want to continue time traveling, then we are having a different conversation, and there are more concerns to bring up. One major one is the fact that there are a great deal of people who would go to possibly unpleasant lengths to get their hands on this technology.

  “I have been around long enough to know that the number of people who can posses this knowledge and not want to use it for illegitimate gains is smaller than one would hope. The more you know about this subject, the larger the target you may become for people who would like to gain this ability. I would say that you and your friends would already be quite valuable to a lot of people. A drop of your blood alone would now hold enough gravitites to keep innumerable scientists happy in research for decades. That is something you’re going to have to live with now anyway, but the more you learn here, the more dangerous things may become for you.”

  “That sounds like more of a reason to have an escape plan to me. Couldn’t having this ability be a great defense against those types of people?”

  Dr. Quickly smiles. “If you keep coming up with all these valid arguments, I’m going to have no choice but to train you.”

  I grin back.

  “We don’t have to figure it all out right now,” he adds. “Let’s go get lunch. You may have had two breakfasts, but I missed mine this morning. I don’t think my stomach will stand for much more of it.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and we head back to the others.

  We spend the rest of the afternoon debriefing from our jumps. By the time we make it home to Mr. Cameron’s house, I’m exhausted. I plop into one of the armchairs in the library and close my eyes for a few minutes, until I feel Spartacus lay his head on my knee.

  “Hey, Bud. How are you doing?” His tail thumps the floor as I scratch behind his ears. Blake comes in and takes a spot on the loveseat.

  “Hey, man,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  “Sorry I almost left you hanging on that roof jump today. I was worried that if I didn’t get back in time, you’d be stuck there not wanting to move, in case I appeared all of a sudden.”

  “No worries, man. I’m just glad you were okay.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m all right. I’m glad we’re getting to the point of making real jumps. It makes the waiting easier if I feel like there is progress at least,” he says.

  “You know if we manage to do this right, Mallory isn’t even going to know you are gone. Do you plan on telling her about it all?”

  “Yeah, definitely. We tell each other everything. There’s no way I could keep something like this from her. I might edit out the fact that I may have gone a little bit crazy with all the stress of waiting to get back to her.” Blake pulls the ring box out of his pocket and opens and closes the lid a couple of times.

  “I don’t know. That is probably romantic. That might be the best part of the story as far as she’s concerned.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I really won’t care what happens once we get back. I feel like I could deal with anything just so long as I get back to her okay. I keep thinking I just want to find the most permanent thing I can, set this chronometer to twenty-three years, and zap myself back as fast as I can get there.”

  “I don’t think these can go that far in one shot,” I say, holding my chronometer up and checking my
own dials.

  “I know,” Blake responds. “Ours don’t go past five, and Quickly said they require external power for anything beyond one, even fully charged. I bet his could do it. Have you had a good look at his chronometer? His has all kinds of settings that ours don’t have. I would bet it could go a lot farther, too.”

  “We’ll get there, man. I know you’re anxious to get back, but this isn’t something we should be rushing through. It sounds like we got pretty lucky, considering our alternatives.”

  One of the parrots flies into the room and alights on one of the curtain rods. I recognize it as Mercutio. “This place is pretty cool,” Blake agrees, watching the bird pace back and forth on the open part of the rod. “I wish Mallory could meet Mr. Cameron. He’s an interesting guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  Francesca walks past the library door, and after a moment, I hear clicking noises coming from the front door. “What are you doing out there, Fresca?”

  She reappears at the doorway. “I’m making sure all these locks work.”

  “Because?” Blake asks.

  “Because there’s a firebombing serial killer loose in the city! Are you not worried about this?”

  “Oh. Yeah. But there’s no reason he would be coming after us.”

  “He’s a psycho serial killer. You really think you know who he’s after?”

  “That’s a good point,” I say.

  “What are we going to do about him?” Francesca asks.

  “Do about who?” Carson appears in the doorway Blake entered from, with a fork and a plate of blueberry pie in his hands. Robbie appears behind him a moment later, also bearing pie, and squeezes past him to take a seat in the other armchair.

  “We’re talking about what to do about Stenger,” I say.

  “That guy is crazy,” Robbie garbles over a mouthful of pie.

  “What can we do really?” Blake asks. “We’re not the cops. And you were saying we should probably steer clear of them, too, considering our circumstances.”